With the proliferation of media devices in the home, there is a growing requirement to have high quality audio/video (AV) signals sourced in one location, made available simply and easily in other locations in the home. Conventionally, disparate content sources may reside in a home where content is viewable or playable in only one location. Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional scenario for home media connectivity 10 is illustrated. Here, a first television or display device 12 may be coupled to an audio/video (AV) receiver 14 which is further coupled to a plurality of content sources, e.g., a DVD player 16, a set-top box 18 and/or a digital video recorder (DVR) 20. A second television 22 is coupled to an Internet Protocol (IP) media player 24, which is further coupled to an Ethernet switch 26 that provides access to a Network-Attached Storage (NAS)/Media Server 28. Lastly, a third television 30 is directly coupled to a digital video disc (DVD) player 32. Although all the devices shown in FIG. 1 may be in a single home, each television or display device 12, 22 30 typically only has access to content on devices directly coupled to that particular television or display device 12, 22 30. For example, television 12 can access content from DVD player 16, set-top box 18 and DVR 20 but can not access content from NAS/Media Server 28 or DVD player 32. Similarly, television 30 can only access content from DVD player 32.
There are several mechanisms known for distributing video around the home. In addition to the many standard definition wireless solutions, solutions such as wireless High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) are starting to emerge for High Definition (HD), though these have limited range. As a wired solution for HD video, using Category 5 Ethernet (Cat5e) cable for Base-Band HDMI video transmission is another possible solution. Several companies, however, also provide IP based media distribution systems. These IP solutions have the advantage over Base Band solutions that do not provide mechanisms to traverse traditional Ethernet infrastructure and are only designed to be point to point. Wireless HDMI solutions require a dedicated infrastructure that essentially replaces the point to point cable with wireless links.
Given the rapid expansion of Ethernet or more broadly IP connectivity in the home, and a rapid expansion in the number of both video sources and displays in the home, a need exists for techniques for simply and effectively delivering audio and video information between multiple points in the home, over unmanaged (and uncontrolled) IP infrastructure.